Issue 43, 2018

Investigation of photocurrents resulting from a living unicellular algae suspension with quinones over time

Abstract

Plants, algae, and some bacteria convert solar energy into chemical energy by using photosynthesis. In light of the current energy environment, many research strategies try to benefit from photosynthesis in order to generate usable photobioelectricity. Among all the strategies developed for transferring electrons from the photosynthetic chain to an outer collecting electrode, we recently implemented a method on a preparative scale (high surface electrode) based on a Chlamydomonas reinhardtii green algae suspension in the presence of exogenous quinones as redox mediators. While giving rise to an interesting performance (10–60 μA cm−2) in the course of one hour, this device appears to cause a slow decrease of the recorded photocurrent. In this paper, we wish to analyze and understand this gradual fall in performance in order to limit this issue in future applications. We thus first show that this kind of degradation could be related to over-irradiation conditions or side-effects of quinones depending on experimental conditions. We therefore built an empirical model involving a kinetic quenching induced by incubation with quinones, which is globally consistent with the experimental data provided by fluorescence measurements achieved after dark incubation of algae in the presence of quinones.

Graphical abstract: Investigation of photocurrents resulting from a living unicellular algae suspension with quinones over time

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
10 7 2018
Accepted
31 8 2018
First published
31 8 2018
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2018,9, 8271-8281

Investigation of photocurrents resulting from a living unicellular algae suspension with quinones over time

G. Longatte, A. Sayegh, J. Delacotte, F. Rappaport, F. Wollman, M. Guille-Collignon and F. Lemaître, Chem. Sci., 2018, 9, 8271 DOI: 10.1039/C8SC03058H

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